New Book, New Site

I have a new book, but I also have a new website! I've copied this blog over to my new Wordpress site, so join me there!

Happy Valentine's Day! Spellkeeper, Book Three of The Bacra Chronicles has been released into the wild. The ebook and paperback aren't linked yet, but they should be soon.

Love is at the core of this book, but it's not all romantic. Old love, new love, romantic, platonic, friendship, familial, redemptive, even learning to love oneself. Spellkeeper is often dark and violent and devastating, but can also be sweet and funny. One of my beta readers described it as "a real emotional roller coaster."

I highly recommend reading Cavelost and Faelost before Spellkeeper, but the same things I said above can be said for them. Love and survival are the driving forces for my characters, but those two things mean something different to each of them. All three books of The Bacra Chronicles can be read for free if you have Kindle Unlimited!

The Bacra Chronicles is an epic fantasy series, but it's a little different from much of the genre. The books are about dragons and magic and adventure, but they're also about living with chronic pain and mental illness, families forged by both blood and choice, struggling through that awkward cusp between adolescence and adulthood, and clawing our way out of the darkness to become better than those who hurt us. The cast is diverse, the language tends toward snarky and colorful (especially once the mercs arrive in the second book), and the journey is a wild ride through a world inspired by locations that include the American Southwest, California, and the Pacific Northwest. I don't particularly recommend The Bacra Chronicles for readers offended by: queer heroes, mental health/chronic pain talk, soft men, assertive women, blood, explosions, casual profanity, blatant insolence toward authority, or weaponized forks. Everyone else, good luck and have fun!

I hope you take a look at my odd little fantasy world. It's quite a ride and I love it just as much as I love my first series, The Malora Octet. I'm writing Book 4 now, and I think the series might finish at Book 6. Who knows, though... The Malora Octet was nothing but a short story that got out of control, after all.

A Little Bit of Magic

What feels like a long, long time ago, I wrote two little stories called "Lastborn" and "Facsimile". They were released on May 31, 2018 within the sci-fi anthologies Holding On By Our Fingertips and Infinite Dysmorphia by Kristell Ink/Grimbold Books. I won't give any specifics on the plots of the stories here since I don't want to be a spoiler, but I will say I'm proud of them and I hope you enjoy reading them.

Photograph by Aline de Nadai on Unsplash

I finally finished a project I began three years ago, and I'm in the last couple steps before publishing it. Rain Falls on Malora is a collection of eighteen short stories set within the world of The Malora Octet. Each story is told by a minor, non-narrator, or entirely new character from the series who hasn't been able to share their own version of events until now. The stories begin with the reveal of what happened to a certain missing character in Mayfly Requiem, cover the Echoes of Oblivion years and their aftermath, introduce you to a couple of Bethel's children who lived between the trilogies, and close with a narration by Sora Thula sixty years after Arrow of Entropy. I'm also including some original character illustrations, maps, family trees (this got way more complicated to draw out than I expected. Thanks, Bethel), a Volle-Common translation dictionary, and some recipes and poetry I created while working on the series.

I'm waiting on my print proof copy now so I can do final edits and fix any formatting errors. Hopefully I won't have too much trouble converting this file to an ebook. I'm excited to give this little treat to my long-time readers, some of whom inspired specific stories within this book. So, here's to the characters who finally get to tell the world their own versions of the truth: Mirren, Delora, Ariana, Summer, Sharo, Rastaban, Mirazen, Rain, Aurelien, Solace, Maple, Zoli, Ulali, Laira, Terali, Eliani, and Sora.

I hope to release Rain Falls on Malora in July. I'm in the process of moving to a different state, so between that and the setback I had with my repaired ulnar nerve earlier this year, I'm a little behind where I wanted to be. I had an ulnar nerve transposition in my right arm in September and I have some permanent damage from the hourglass constriction that lead to it, so I've had to modify how I type, hold a pen, cook, etc. It has been a long and painful process, but I'm getting there.

Photographs via Unsplash: Nathan Dumlao, Christian Holzinger, Christopher Campbell, Steve Halama,
Tess Nebula, Jing Ang, Ricardo Gomez Angel, Nate Reyfield, Aline de Nadai 

Oh, look at that! The weird things I do when on migraine meds... I wanted to make the chronological order of The Malora Octet a little more obvious and tie the entire series to Rain Falls on Malora visually, so I redid all of the ebook covers. I love seeing them all together. I've left the paperback covers alone since it takes more time to change them than I have right now. You can still find all eight books on Amazon.

Last, but very much not least...

I finished Faelost!

I'm also awaiting the arrival of the Faelost print proof. I like to use a print copy to do my final edits, and this one will take a little while. Why? It's long, 145,000 words, so it's by far my biggest book (Mayfly Requiem was *only* 130k). And, I have no idea what to write for the blurb without spoiling something major that happens just a few short chapters in. I'll have to think on that.

Faelost is the sequel to Cavelost, and it continues immediately where Cavelost left off, but it should work as a stand-alone story. It's told by Rin's second son, Tessen, who finds himself on an unwanted adventure following the hatching of his brother Shan's two stolen dragon eggs.

Oh wait, there's just a little bit more. I'm working on The Bacra Chronicles Book 3 now, Spellkeeper. I'm way into it and hoping I can keep up my momentum on it over the summer. Spellkeeper is the first time in over ten years that I've written a novel in third person (the last being the Echoes of Oblivion trilogy). There are four point-of-view characters for this book -- two from the previous books and two who are new. I'm not sure yet how many books The Bacra Chronicles will end up being, but as of now I know where books 4 and 5 need to go.

Busy, busy, always busy

First of all, I have a new book release, and it is nothing like my others. Elora Goes to the Moons is a children's book I wrote for my youngest daughter, who loves the Moon. I made a weekend project of flying the cartoon version of her through the Solar System. Several of my friends wanted their own copies of the book after seeing my fragile scrapbook version, so I scanned it, uploaded it to Createspace, received a beautiful-looking proof, and made it available in paperback on Amazon. It's handmade and handwritten, and it has a lot of fun little science facts throughout.

I've hidden my epistolary blog, Cavelost. Why? Because it's finished. I've done a couple of editing rounds on it, and today I uploaded the formatted version so I can get a print copy to do final edits and copyedits on. The characters have decided to expand upon their world and make Cavelost the first of a series called The Bacra Chronicles. I'll be starting the next book, Faelost, during NaNoWriMo. Cavelost is told by a former mercenary named Rin Sylleth, who wakes up trapped in a massive cave system. Faelost will be told by Rin's second son, Tessen.

On a sadder note, I lost my cat muse on Friday. Reno passed away suddenly during the night, and we have no explanation for it. Since he was young, only between 4-6 years old, the vet said it was most likely caused by a heart issue. We adopted Reno on Valentine's Day almost two years ago. He helped me out of the doldrums so I could finish writing Sand into Glass and editing The Crystal Lattice, and he sat with me through nearly every word of the three books I've written since. I'm in shock and I'm going to miss him tremendously. I keep expecting to see him lounging on his favorite chair and when I get up in the middle of the night, I run my hand across the end of the bed, expecting him to be there. It's difficult to write without him by my side.